2018 Financial Year in Review

I spent a couple of hours this morning finally getting caught up on our expenses from November and early December. Fortunately, I had been on top of things since mid December, so since then, and into January are already up to date!

2018 was our most expensive year since we took off in the motorhome in 2007. By far!

(By the way, this is the second blog post today... you can see the first one here.)

We spent a total of $35,564 CAD (about $27,000 USD). To give you some perspective, in the last five years prior to that, we spent between $17,000 and $22,000 CAD each year.

A big chunk of that was due to motorhome repair and maintenance. Sherman is getting old. In fact, he'll be 23 years old this year. And, we don't treat him gently! We did 9,000 kms (5,400) miles in the first three months of the year on some very rough roads in Mexico. And then, we drove him up to the Arctic Ocean where we did 1,700 kms (1,050 miles) of rough dirt road on the Dempster Highway to Tuktoyaktuk.

We spent $9,330 CAD ($7,100 USD) on new tires all around, ball joints, lower control arms, a major tune up, new brakes all around and a couple of wheel alignments!

Our next biggest expense for the year was fuel. We did a lot of miles in 2018, and much of it was in places where fuel is very expensive...Mexico and Yukon and Northwest Territories. We spent $9,100 CAD (about $6,900 USD) on fuel to drive about 32,000 kms (20,000 miles).

Our "miscellaneous" column took a big hit this year as well. We bought a new camera for you at $885 CAD, good quality used bicycles at $734 CAD, new hiking boots, new camp chairs, etc.

We spent $1,068 CAD staying connected throughout the year.

Grocery expenses were lower than expected. Everybody warned of us of the expensive products on the shelves up in the north, and to a certain extent that is true. But Ruth is a smart shopper and knows how to stretch the food budget. We bought things that were on sale and didn't buy anything that wasn't necessary. We averaged $410 CAD ($309 USD) per month. That included a couple of $500 months, and even a couple of $200 months!

We spent $2,500 CAD ($1,900 USD) on booze. That's higher than the last five years, however only because we didn't work at Cabri park in 2018, while we spent 5 dry months there every summer for the previous five years.

Entertainment expenses were below average at $131 CAD ($100 USD) per month including meals out. We do a lot of hiking, which is both free and good for you!

Overnight expenses were really cheap at $649 CAD ($490 USD) for the year. Part of that is because the four months we spent in Mexico in 2018 were with the RV caravans and overnight expenses are covered as part of our compensation. The other part is because we do a lot of boondocking! 

And we spent $977 on "travel"... this includes air fare and car rentals.

It will be interesting to see how 2019 works out financially. Hopefully Sherman's repair bills will be minimal. We're thinking of leaving him in Texas for the summer and flying back to Canada. We've already got our airfare to Australia booked, but no idea what kind of expense we are going to have there for transportation. And, we're thinking of visiting a friend on his boat in Bahamas for a week or so in April, and then we'll also look for a trip to take in late August or early September. No idea where.

And then maybe another RV Caravan tour back to Mexico next November... we'll see... :-)

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